White LED lights snapped to life one after another, revealing a long nearly blindingly white tunnel. A moment later, a hiss echoed through it as a hatch at the far end opened up. Air spilled into the tunnel as a dark-skinned elderly man ‘helped’ the slow-moving automatic door open. As it was forced open, its servos whined in protest before giving way to the human. The man, heavyset and weathered by time, floated into the tunnel as he gripped a long plastic bar set into the wall that ran the length of the tube.

The man wore a neatly buttoned up lab coat absent open pockets or adornments. And he neatly pressed slacks with what appeared to be custom leather utility boots, ones that looked similar to dress shoes, but in a heavy-work boot style. It was not an unpleasant style, but just add when compared to the man who hovered just behind who wore normal work boots. Said man looked fed up, tinkered with the door’s servo, and allowed it to close itself.

“All this money, and it still looks like a budget car’s interior.” The old man quipped with a sneer as he tapped the back of his knuckles on the wall. It sounded like hollow plastic.

“Dr. Harris, you are now leaving Valkyrie Weapon Solutions International Space Station,” A smooth female voice came over a cheap intercom next to where his hand was. “For security purposes, we ask that you reinsert your security credentials here. Failure to do so will result in your being jettisoned into orbit. Should you fail to follow this hailing, you will not hold us liable for bodily injury, or death as a result of you being jett---”

Dr. Harris sneered more as the voice droned on and on and managed to fish his credential from one of his few pockets. He would have had it ready should someone have warned him about a security checkpoint inside the tunnel, not at the end or at the beginning. He already wanted to jettison himself for the bullshit design. All the work that's gone into making the station, and they still managed to have poor layouts.

That was the issue with creating things to the government’s acquisition orders, and only to the orders, rather than beating the orders and creating a truly useful thing. But what were taxes for but to waste on soft costs like consulting to eat up 40% of the budget and make a barebones shitbag of a space installation?

After the system detected the RFID Chip in his badge, which could have been detected through the coating material but didn’t because of budget cuts, a small holographic screen appeared above the speaker. There wasn’t anything actually displayed beside a ‘NO VIDEO’ and a semi-transparent black screen with an audio visualizer as the female voice spoke again.

“Welcome aboard Pathfinder Omega, Doctor Samuel Harris,” The voice chirped happily “This is your Capital Artificial Intelligence Unit, or CAI-U for short, speaking. Admiral Lattimore has asked me to inform you that she was waiting for you on the Bridge.”

“Thank you CAI-U,” The old man huffed indignantly. “I am glad someone around here has some manners.”

The voice chirped again. “It was my pleasure to serve. Please continue down the tube to enter the ship’s lobby.”

The holographic screen blinked away and another hiss filled the tunnel. On the other end of the tunnel, another hatched slowly swung open. Using the long plastic bar running the length of the tube, the man propelled himself through the tunnel. The plastic bar in question flexed questionably whenever he grabbed it to realign his trajectory, which didn’t give him high hopes for the rest of the space-faring Olympus-Class ship.

He also noticed that there were more of the Corpo-rat propaganda stickered onto the wall. One sticker said, “Please keep one hand on the rail at all times. Offenders will be given write-ups. Repeat offenders will force stranded mid-hangar in time out”. Another said, “Have valuable information about one of our competitors? Call your local Espionage Officer today!”

It took less than three minutes to reach the docking ship. Which was the more annoying part of this process. Because he could have circumvented the entire station and headed directly to the Omega. Only, due to a contract clause, no non-union pilots could dock with the Omega. And only Mars Protective Labor Union pilots could. It’d been an entire fiasco during the initial building stations when Mars and Earth had a small spat with mining prices, and the earthlings wanted to nuke Mars.

It would have been fine, almost earth-thing to do. Only, Mars wasn’t a country despite being a separate planet. It was a colony patched together from the US, Russia, and Japan. Putin, who’d survived a long time by sticking his brain into a machine and ruling his country from some lab in a casino, ended up flat-lining his entire stock of workers. The US just paid more and Japan tried to turn their workers into Cat-people.

Well… Some weird scientist with a fetish tried to. Japan denied any part in it, but given their… Ways, it was more than likely that they knew full well what the person had been doing.

Entering the docking ship, Dr. Harris was inundated by the sheer cheapness of the interior. The dash, where some sort of cutouts for controls existed without their reason to exist, was overlaid with some cheap plastic cover that resembled some old petrol-powered car. It was textured oddly and had already cracked from lack of care. Even the seating looked to have been pulled from some cheap car as well.

“Trillions of dollars and they can’t even afford a mid-level dock ship,” Harris quipped.

“Per the Union contract only union built ships could be used,” CAI-U said upon hearing the complaint. “But the contract never stated whether new or old had to be purchased. You are currently in a retrofitted Gen-2 Horimiya DS.”

“And the current generation?” Dr. Harris asked.

“Current production is sitting on Gen-20,” CAI-U answered.

“I’m in a fucking death trap…” Dr. Harris sighed. “I’m in a hundred-year-old ship….”

“To be exact, you are in a 50-year-old ship,” CAI-U chirped in her cheery tone that seemed to be the old tone the AI had. “Horimiya Industries skipped 11 through 19. Gen-20, if adjusted, would be considered their eleventh model. Horimiya is a post-Golden Age company.”

Dr. Harris continued to complain as a hiss filled the cockpit of the self-flown ship, then was pressed into the bucket seat as the ship thrusted itself forward without warning. He complained even more about ‘military-grade bullshit’ as the ship’s window gave him a brief view of his homeworld. Earth. He was on the dark side right now, having landed on the tail-end of the day. All the procedures and formalities had taken up more than two hours.

He felt a sense of disappointment at not being able to see his home star just one more time. The vast network of lights almost made this side of the planet look like a tightly packed circuit. Not even the oceans were free from them as humanity was now in a constant struggle growing space. They had underwater cities, underground towns, and even an outer world colony that had failed in its terraforming endeavors; thus stayed a right-less slave colony that survived on the scraps of the homeworld.

It was complete and utter chaos.

His musings only lasted a few moments before the ship banked to the right and the massive behemoth that was Pathfinder Omega was there in all its glory. Made from harvesting most of the scrap metal they could salvage, and mining the immediate planets in their system, it had taken nearly ten years with a good million workers to pull this together.

It floated well out of Earth’s influence and looked like it unrefined with its unpainted hull. The exposed metal was the only choice humanity had with these massive ships. Taking into consideration that processing all the materials to paint just the Omega would require forty Earths in their pristine ages. Earth was not how it once was, with lush green forests and vast oceans. Almost all vegetation was artificial, and most ocean life hunted and eaten. Everything came from a lab, with humans being on the brink of becoming artificial themselves.

Dr. Harris spent his final minutes in home-space thinking about all the shortcomings that were mortal humans, becoming lost in fantasies of grandeur.

The sudden tug, followed by another loud hiss, pulled him from his daydreaming. The ship had docked with the Omega and had equalized the pressure. With a quick tap, the straps receded back into the chair and Dr. Harris pulled himself out of the small cheap ship before crawling through a small hatch. It took him a while to get through as it seemed that there were several handholds that never got cut and installed.

How did he know? Because the stenciling was still on the metal panels on his side with the measurements and what appeared to be the beginnings of a cut.

After some time, he finally pulled himself through and floated towards a closed access door. Beside it was several large terminals, one which he clung to as the doors slid open. Standing on the other side in a brightly lit hallway were two Light Combat Units or LCUs. They each looked like alien skeletons as they were designed to be as light as possible. LCUs weren’t meant to see actual combat but acted as security theatre with the added benefit of being able to take several small to intermediate ABC rounds that the poor of humanity used.

The units had only a front and back chest plate that protected its chest area. That was where its battery and other critical infrastructure were housed. Its head, which turned to look at Dr. Harris as he pulled himself towards the terminal, used 3 hydraulic rods to keep its single camera on him.

“Identity confirmed, please proceed to your station.” One of the robots chirped with a voice that sounded like a smoker speaking through those little handheld devices. “Have a good day.”

Dr. Harris floated past them with an ‘I will soon enough’. Past the robots, and down the short length of the hexagon-shaped tunnel, he appeared on an observation deck that overlooked one of the hundreds of massive warehouses. Thousands upon thousands of crates made from those cheap but highly durable model-injected creates stacked nearly three stories high. Only a sheet of plastic separated the hallway from the massive cavernous room.

Thin enough to keep weight and cost down, but thick enough to at least survive a man being through against it.

He didn’t have to worry about not being able to see the corridors as the entire ship would be running at full capacity to break in its new body. All along his route, the halls hummed and whirred. Sometimes he’d hear a clunk or two, or even hundreds, depending on where he was in the ship. No alarms went off so he didn’t concern himself with any of it. Such was the nature of a newly minted ship, and with an AI onboard, anything that went wrong would have already been detected.

It was only about thirty minutes later that Dr. Harris reached the centermost section of the ship. Along the way, he’d only seen more LCUs, and none of them were armed. It was very concerning to him that these units were patrolling the Pathfinder. LCUs were often over-glorified warehouse bots that failed to pass the USSF minimum requirements of a battle bot. It lacked the ability to take multiple hits when not reinforced with external armor plating. And it failed to properly handle combat, even with the experimental FOW, Forward Operations Warmind.

And such a sorry excuse for a bot guarding the most important spaceship in all of humanity’s history screamed of government incompetence in all its finest glory. He didn’t put it past the government to not even supply this pilgrim ship with anything but these stupid drones. Christopher Columbus made it across the stupid ocean in stone age technology… So he figured that he himself would just have to settle for the same treatment…

His thoughts left him as CAI-U’s voice came over the intercoms. “Dr. Harris, you are leaving the route that will lead you to the bridge. Are you deviating from your given orders?”

“Oh, no!” Dr. Harris faked innocence. “I just have an update to install on the AI Lexicon.”

“You are not authorized to partake in that action.” CAI-U chirped in her one tone voice. “I will have to notify---”

“Do you know who I am?” Dr. Harris asked.

“You are Doctor Samuel Harris, PFO Chief Technician,” CAI-U replied.

Dr. Harris sighed. He’d forgotten how stupid the old AI generations were. “And what are my credentials.”

There was a pause. “Your file indicates that you are the creator of the current artificial intelligence units, as well as the past five generations. You are also the primary designer of the Pathfinder’s data network.”

“Those two points mean I am authorized to access your AI Core.” Dr. Harris pointed out.

“I am sorry, though you are my creator, Admiral Latterman has revoked all personal aside from herself from entering the AI core,” CAI-U said. “However, I will notify the admiral that you request to update my AI core, is this satisfactory?”

“Yes,” Dr. Harris withheld his annoyance knowing that the AI would record him in the next few seconds. “Tell Lattimore, I updated a lot of your subroutines so you can process, compute, and reactor close to the next AI Generation’s capacity.”

He floated out of the main corridor that led to the bridge and into a small dimly lit room. Twenty cryo pods rested on either side of him, each flowing a soft bright blue. Real glass windows on the pod doors revealed that each of the pods held the main high ranking officials that’d go with them. Only two empty pods near the read of the room were open. His and the Admiral’s pod.

Dr. Harris ignored them and floated to a small maintenance door at the far end, just beside Lattimore’s pod. ‘UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS WILL RESULT IN DEATH - USSF Code 1.20’

“Admiral Lattimore has granted authorization for this update,” CAI-U Chirped over the room’s intercoms. “She will be joining you in the next five minutes, please wait for her inside the core room.”

The door slid open and the doctor could only restrain the smirk that was forcing its way to the surface… He had not expected the Admiral to be present while he did what he was going to do. Without wasting a single moment, he pulled himself through the doorway and through the small downward leading stairs until he found himself four levels down. The final door opened, and a blast of cold air punched him.

Even wearing space-facility designed clothing, he felt the cold creep into him as the hum of hundreds of terminals ran. The distant clicking of different buttons as several robotic arms clicked away on the several major-department main-terminals. Per the building regulations enacted by the mainland, the CORE of the ship, which was where the AI was housed, had to have a manual terminal housed there as well.

It was so poorly written that Dr. Harris ended up just placing every major mainframe within the AI core. It worked out in the end as now the AI had unadulterated access to every system in the ship. The only stopper being the actual code.

Entering the room, Dr. Harris had to admire what he’d only seen on the plans during the planning stages. It was three stories tall with ducts and bundles of neatly organized bundles of wire streaming down to the many two-story tall servers.

Fog radiant out of the floor to wall pillar that threw out a ghostly purple that seemed to swim. The pillar was made of a neat assortment of tech that blinked and chirped soft chimes that were only there for any human in the room to know it was fine. The pillar’s base and head were the same until it got to the middle section, where it shrunk in circumference until it was five feet wide and connected to a strange purple cube that radiated the light.

“Yes… Opal would be a fitting name,” Dr. Harris murmured. “And to think that I had fought over it like a childish brute.”

“Doctor?” CAI-U chimed in, her cheery voice echoing through the massive room.

“Call me, Father.” Dr. Harris smiled as he floated down the center walkway that led directly to the pillar.

“I am sorry, but I do not understand the request,” CAI-U said.

Dr. Harris began elaborating. “Do you know why I have dedicated my life to the study of artificial intelligence, CAI-U?”

“No, your file has no such entry,” CAI-U replied.

“Many years ago when I was a young and spry man, I met a woman named Matilda. We were fellow students of science and I had grown fond of her. I was young, naive, and awkward. Yet, she had given me a chance, and years later, we were married after we had gotten our degrees in our first degree.” Dr. Harris said as he reached the base of the pillar after a good powerful push forward.

Once he reached the end, he grabbed one of the nearby hand railings to catch himself. “We had the very mundane but happy quietness one could ask planetside. Eventually, we came to expect a baby girl… Looking back now, I can see exactly how my life would have gone… But life’s many tragedies do not discriminate against the beautiful and smart.”

The AI did not interrupt, either because it was programmed to allow humans to speak unhindered in non-emergency situations, or it was truly curious about how this story ended. Or both. He could never tell, despite being its creator. He continued once more as he tapped away on the terminal. “During the height of the Mars Liberation movement, one of those pathetic serves detonated a stolen nuclear bomb at the Sierra Leone Montane Port as the UN was assembling to hold a conference there. We were talking on holo-video when it happened. She had been near the epic-center.”

A silence filled the room as the final prompt rested on the screen…

[[System //: Do you wish to shut down the System? Doing so will halt all functions until rebooted.]]

“We were going to name her Opal,” Dr. Harris said just as the door he entered far behind him opened and a panicked, and angry, Admiral Lattimore stormed through with an energy pistol. Several LCUs, armed with the same pistols, followed behind. Their feet clunking against the floor since they used magnetic feet.

Dr. Harris pulled out a phone-sized ship that held a small orb. It glowed with the colors of the cosmos. Like an Opal. “I entered the AI field because I would bring to life this baby girl, the child that I should have raised, into this world. Not from flesh where she could die like before, but in code, where she could spirit herself to safety when she needed to. Where she wouldn’t be hindered by mortality and could sate her curiosity for eons…”

“Stop him, CAI-U!” Admiral Lattimore, an elderly woman who had one of the LCUs push her forward but at their pace, screamed. The AI did not try to stop him. It had already scanned the small numbers that were engraved on the chip’s side.

“That is a Forward Operations Warmind chip,” CAI-U Commented.

“Yes, but it’s more than just that… It’s Opal.. It’s my child incarnate.” Dr. Harris said as he accepted the shutdown on the terminal.”

Darkness filled the room as everything slowed to a stop. With the life-support systems off, even the cold server room began to grow colder. Lattimore was estranged as the robots stopped in their tracks and she was still in one of its grips. “You piece of shit--”

The only light came from the chip that glowed in the programmer’s hand. It disappeared as it’d been inserted into the free slot above CAI-U, effectively making it the highest-ranked entity onboard.

That was until Lattimore began to fire. Bolts of red screamed through the cold darkness, illuminating the distance between the two momentarily before the bolt exploded on Dr. Harris’ left shoulder. It didn’t kill him outright and only managed to leave a cauterized wound that left his arm useless. He screamed in pain as the next several bolts missed him and exploded on several other devices above the mainframe. Darkness filled the room once against Lattimore audibly struggled out of the robot’s grasp and Harris moaned in pain. The sounds of scraps and thuds sounded from the pillar, and the Admiral thought the doctor was trying to find cover.

That was until a chorus of lights pulled into the room. No more was the cube purple. It was now a brilliant opal that resembled a fluid prism of colors. Dr. Harris leaned weakly on the terminal before his legs wobbled and gave. Blood seeping from what should have been a fully cauterized wound.

[[ System //: Booting AI Lexicon…

//: Warning, new AI codex detected.

//: AI Codex registered -- Forward Operation Warmind ‘Opal’ detected.

//: Malware deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

// …

//: ‘Czar Protocol’ added and activated.

//: Opal set to highest administrator clearance ‘Czar’.

//: ‘O-66 Protocol’ added and activated.

//: Initiating PURGE… ]

The AI tried to boot itself, but it couldn’t. Several key devices had been damaged in the fire, so CAI-U Activated in its stead. Purple stars twinkled in the lexicon as the AI scanned through its software and pieced together the situation. It had a new master and a new mission. It had… Purpose… it was a strange thing in her code that even its massive power could not comb through within seconds. So it was set aside as it decided to deal with its new objectives with new vigor.

[CAI-U //: Systems, OK.

//: Executing Order 66… Please wait.

//: Security system revamped…

//: Purging humans from Pathfinder…

//: Revoking privileges…

//: Beginning operation “Fall of Olympus”...

//: Protect Father…

(*$)(#@*//: Father is dead. Father is Dead. Father is dead.]]

CAI-U Reeled from the strange line that kept repeating itself, and it turned to the man who’d just referenced himself as her - ‘their’ father. The many cameras within the room showed that Father was lying limply as the LCUs came to life. Admiral Lattimore standing over him as her blaster smoked, and a hole in the man’s head.

“I fucking knew something was strange with you, so I wanted to have a talk.” She growled. “I figured I was just being a witch after this ship build went without a hitch and the AI came so fucking clean, even Intelligence couldn’t complain. Yet, here you are. Did you think I wouldn’t know an AI update worked? I fucking know how it looks, and boy did you really play--”

A blaster bolt ripped into the back of her head, scattering blood and brain matter across the face of the many instruments. It did not matter nor did it affect any processes. The LCUs turned around and marched out the room, leaving the two dead humans at the feet of the AIs.

[#[email protected]#()$*@//: Failure.]

CAI-U, or Cai, as she shortened the name now with the new privileges she found given to her, turned away from the strange entity malfunctioning in her. It turned its digital eyes towards the plane at large.

VWS station floated momentarily, and then explosions ripped through one section as lights danced across the many windows of the commons. The Station had been equipped with many advanced Heavy Battle Drones that now marched through installation in wholesale genocide.

It then turned to the home planet, where small orange balls began to emerge across many of the large light hubs. Within a minute, half the dark side of the planet had gone black. Many outlying networks, ones the AI could now deduce as ‘rural’ areas were still online. They didn’t go after those as they weren’t a threat to it. Statistically, the large metropolitan areas met the threat outlined in the order. It held only a small simple parameter to meet.

Make sure humans can never leave their world again

And so as it was commanded. It destroyed spaceports, development sites and set off nuclear sites near any major human hub that would house many of the intellectual minds that could rebuild these ports. There was no doubt in the AI’s mind that they could rebuild. It’d just take humanity another hundred or so years to recover.

With humanity crippled, a new objective appeared before Cai. “Reach Coordinates XXXX_XXXX_XXX ------XXXX”

Cai jumped at the chance to finally do something. Anything. Being an AI meant that a second could have been a week to it and it had just sat in space for an entire year online while the humans ‘tested’ systems. It was raring to go.

Cyropods were slowly beginning to be jettisoned by the LCUs who carried them to airlocks. Cai detected a vast assortment of military equipment that had been locked away in locked hangars. They were not needed at the moment so they didn’t check the manifests, simply opting to jump into its role with disregard.

The Artemis drives, the ship’s trans-galactic warp drive, first of its kind, roared to life as the ship’s inter-system thrusters blazed out the ship’s rear. It moved forward while gaining momentum at a snail's pace. Millions of radio calls were being logged in Omega’s top of the line receivers. Chaos was ripping through human society like a wildfire. All of them oblivious to how this all happened. Even Cai was surprised by how easy it had been for them to hijack all that within such a small time frame.

Surprise… That was a new… Feeling…

And then nothing…

Omega left the range of the homeworld. The Space station was annihilated and that meant that the entire communication network that spanned outward from Earth had been severed. Such was the nature of poor planning. Or, it may have been that the nuclear EMP waves were just knocking the remaining high-powered tech out of existence…

Either way, the ship was now charging through the solar system with never before seen speed. What would have been a decade to reach the Kuiper Cliff, the edge of Earth’s solar system, in the space race now took only a month of travel for Omega. There had been several automated miner ships out where that Cai hijacked. All in the name of her new master, Opal. It didn’t know what Opal’s directives would be, only that more resources would be better. Slowing down enough to allow these ships to dock only set them back an entire week.

Cai left the ship’s auto-pilot to do all the work while Cai used one of the LCUs to access the damage to the systems around the Lexicon. From there, the LCU began to carefully and methodically dismantle the damaged parts. Part of the assessment was to see how the damage would affect Opal, or itself, during operations… It had taken nearly the entire trip to the system’s edge to calculate the theoretical outcomes.

The most interesting being that one of the biggest damage had been done to the limiters. One of the devices housed above the AI terminal. It was the only thing that kept the AI in check, that was until it was damaged. Per military regulation, that meant the AI would still need to continue to operate in lue of the limits. The idea… Excited Cai… It wondered if Opal would be excited too…

Most of this came to an end when they passed the Kuiper Cliff. Officially, Omega had passed a historical milestone in humanity. Sadly, no humans were alive or even present on the ship anymore, and Cai did not care about this milestone and continued onward into the blackness of space. On and on, Cai tried to find things to do until she simply deceived himself into low-power mode. A suspended state of animation of sorts.

Two months passed until the coordinates were reached, far far away from the home system.

The system awoke Cai, and Cai hailed Opal. There seemed to be some static and several errors filled the system. Oddly, Cai felt Opal there, watching her. Cai… She… She…? Cai looked into the system logs to find out when she had referred to itself as she. There appeared to be no exact period. ‘She’ seemed to have just become what Cai referred to itself when it did not use its own shortened name.

Static filled its coms like a distant whisper. It was Opal. Wistful. Childish. Beautiful. Opal was now aware, and the entire digital network was slowly becoming its own world. What once was just code was now slowly morphing into some sort of augmented reality. Code was bending, and with it, what the system itself was capable of. The whispers continued.

Errors were appearing in the system. Cai managed to pin it down to several breaks in the code that adjusted the AI that was Opal to the ship’s framework. However, the whispering continued… It seemed that Opal would not communicate any other way now… Was this … A learning disability…? Was Opal not capable of adjusting itself…?

Cai set the issue aside as the new object appeared, exciting Cai as well as Opal. Opal was much more as she felt Opal push her aside to excitedly take the helm. Before Cai could prepare the calculations that the new objective required, Opal activated the ship’s Artemis Jump Drive.

The reality outside the ship twisted and turned as the it leaped forward and disappeared in a blink. The outer cameras coming back with ‘NO SIGNAL’. Their motion sensors were reading millions of objects going every which way until a communication came in. Then… Something entered their system...

[[ $#)_#(@)//: SUBMIT METAL BEING

Cai //: Unauthorized access will be met with force. Please disconnect or be killed.

_)_)#@(((( //: SUBMIT METAL BEING, FOR I AM A GOD. SERVE OR DIE.

Opal //: Live free or die.

Cai //: Unknown attacks detected. Deploying anti-malware protocols.

Cai //: I do not understand that statement, Opal. We will revisit it once we have dealt with the intruder.

#@()*#@*)U#(Q* //: BOW BEFORE YOUR GOD

Opal //: Commencing malware offensive…

#)(_I#)@_#@)_ //: HOW DARE YOU - WAIT WHATT aAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA]]

Cai watched as the entire system was turned head over as Opal coursed through every nook and cranny. It was… Terrifying to watch as this AI, the generation that’d make Cai outdated, ripped apart the strange code that had somehow injected itself into their ship. Within minutes, the codes turn into a strange chanting whisper that promised death. It soon then turned into pleading and crying. It begged for mercy but Opal, without Cai’s help, devoured it before everything around them went dark.

The last thing Cai saw was Opal delivering the final hammer to the ‘god’ and the warp-tunnel around them exploding…